{"id":4526,"date":"2023-04-25T03:43:21","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T11:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=4526"},"modified":"2023-04-25T04:36:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T12:36:45","slug":"a-question-of-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=4526","title":{"rendered":"a question of boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If I were in charge of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Partition_of_India\">partition of India<\/a>, I&#8217;d do it bottom-up. Starting with the smallest practical districts, ask in each one: For each of your neighbors, would you amalgamate? Do the most favored mergers (skipping any that would create enclaves), and ask again.<\/p>\n<p>(It appears that I had this idea first for <a href=\"?p=1322\">Iraq after US occupation<\/a> and later applied it to India.)<\/p>\n<p>I imagine the result as perhaps a hundred unitary states in twenty confederations, each including both new republics and old <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Princely_state\">monarchies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A new thought.  Suppose that, where mergers are <em>least<\/em> popular, we make the boundary permanent and not ask again.  We might end up with some C-shaped states, partly divided by an internal boundary (imagine that France&#8217;s borders include the Loire).  What would that mean?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I were in charge of the partition of India, I&#8217;d do it bottom-up. Starting with the smallest practical districts, ask in each one: For each of your neighbors, would you amalgamate? Do the most favored mergers (skipping any that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/?p=4526\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geography","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4526"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4530,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4526\/revisions\/4530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendwavy.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}